INFLATION - Do you know what it is??

Let me tell you this word keeps coming to me almost everyday in someway or the other( mostly by the means of news papers and channels ) ..
I wonder what this word means to a common Indian like me ... but it means alot to the common people... Inflation is at its thirteen years highest percentage now in India ........

To understand this let me take an example........
assume that there are only two commodities say Apples and money in this world.. if due to some drought or something if the crop and availability of apples decreases then imagine the situation..
You will have more money,but the supply of apples is not according to your demand... So obviously the price of apples will increase.... Either you have to decrease the value of money or the most common thing is that the price of goods will increase..... This is exactly what the situation in India is now....

We are at around 7.9% of inflation now ... All well developed countries are in between 2-3% which is optimum... Imagine the situation in Zembabwe where the inflation is at a rate of 35000%..

Due to the increase in the price of most common goods and petrol the people effected are mostly middle class... And in s/w companies this year salaries are decreasing to keep a watch on this. Lets say to decrease the buying capacity of people...

Whatever may happen but we cant stop buying some things for our dialy usage... This is mostly like speculation.. You should have inflation but it should not be too high also....

The formula to calculate speculation is = 100S/(100+i) .

where S= standard ( In india 1993-94 fy is the most stable one) amount
i= percentage of inflation.

Like if you say you can buy 5 kg of potato with 10 Rs in 1993-94 (which is taken as standard year for being financially stable) and present inflation percentage is lets say 8, then you can buy {5/(100+8)} kg of potato now...

You can now get feel of what is the impact of inflation on our day to day life...

These are just the most common views as a common Indian... I am not a Economist infact economics is well above my horizon...

Do share your views on inflation and the steps that we can practice to make it optimum which will be of use to most of the people..